Re-envisioning peacekeeping: Simulation, the United Nations and the mobilization of ideology

The purpose of the present study was to critically assess the role and place of United Nations peacekeeping in the practice and theory of post-Cold War international relations. Specific cases of United Nations peacekeeping and interventionism--in North Korea, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda--were closely detailed. For the purpose of the critical analysis, three possible, yet complementary, levels of reading of the case-studies were introduced: a strictly denotative and normative interpretation which, simply put, told the story of UN peacekeeping from the perspective of its successes and failures; a more complex criticism of the United Nations as an ideological instrument of global governance and neoliberalism; and a supplementary postmodern reading which, building upon the previous two levels of analysis, sought to highlight the inconsistencies and inherent discontinuities of UN peacekeeping as a normative practice and as an ideological enterprise. Throughout this multi-layered critical analysis, the emphasis was placed on vision and the visual models and media through which UN peacekeeping was both practically and ideologically mobilized. Techniques such as panoptic modes of surveillance, visual simulations by means of cinema or television, photographic allegories were used to give the appearance that United Nations interventions were effective (in keeping the peace) and contributed to the realization of liberal ideologies of governance (more trivially known as New World Order ideals). This study showed, however, that such an intervention only took place at a level of appearances and make-believe, and that the UN in the mid-1990s may best be interpreted as a failing simulation. Indeed, instead of keeping or making the peace in the countries where it intervened, and despite its arsenal of visual devices, the UN could not prevent instances of disruption, disorder, and instability from haunting the post-Cold War international landscape, to the dismay of neoliberal world order ideologues

Para além da paz liberal? respostas ao "retrocesso" Beyond liberal peace? responses to "backsliding"

A ortodoxia familiar de construção da paz liberal depende da transplantação e da exportação de condicionalidade e dependência, com vistas a consolidar um contrato social entre populações, seus governos e o Estado, em que repouse uma paz liberal legítima e consensual. O que, com frequência, ocorre, é uma forma híbrida de paz liberal, sujeita a críticas locais poderosas, à resistência, por vezes, e à percepção de que a construção da paz internacional está fracassando em corresponder às expectativas. Em termos kantianos, os problemas com que a paz liberal tem se deparado e a crise pela qual está hoje passando podem ser denominados "retrocesso". Tem sido particularmente notável que a construção da paz liberal não vem sendo capaz de construir políticas unidas a partir de fragmentos territoriais no Kosovo, na Bósnia, no Afeganistão, no Iraque, no Sri Lanka e mesmo na Irlanda do Norte, onde alguns ou todos de seus elementos estão em desenvolvimento. Isso indica uma necessidade ou de reforma do modelo liberal para a paz, ou de estabelecimento de uma capacidade de coexistência desse modelo com alternativas, ou de substituição do modelo. Este artigo examina uma gama de questões inerentes ao paradigma de construção da paz liberal, algumas causas de "retrocesso" e o que pode ser feito no que tange a tais causas, no sentido de utilizar a construção da paz para criar um novo contrato social e atingir o que se poderia muito bem ser uma forma "híbrida liberal-local" de paz.<br>The familiar orthodoxy of liberal peacebuilding depends upon transplanting and exporting conditionality and dependency in order to cement a social contract between populations, their governments and the state, on which rests a legitimate and consensual liberal peace. What often emerges is a hybrid form of the liberal peace, subject to powerful local critiques, sometimes resistance, and to the perception that international peacebuilding is failing to live up to expectations. In Kantian terms, the problems that the liberal peace has faced, and the crisis that it is now in, can be termed "backsliding". It has been particularly notable that liberal peacebuilding has not been able to build united polities from territorial fragments in Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, and even in Northern Ireland, where some or all if its elements are in development. This indicates a need for a reform of the liberal model for peace, or to establish a capacity for it to coexist with other alternatives, or to replace it. This article examines a range of issues inherent in the liberal peacebuilding paradigm, some causes of backsliding, and what might be done about them in terms of using peacebuilding to create a new social contract and to arrive at may well be a "liberal-local hybrid" form of peace

The security-development nexus and the rise of 'anti-foreign policy'

Current debates and discussions of the emerging security-development nexus tend to portray this as signifying the increased importance of the problems of non-Western states to Western policy-makers. This article seeks to challenge this perspective and analyses how the policy 'nexus' reflects a retreat from strategic policy-making and a more inward-looking approach to foreign policy, more concerned with self-image than the policy consequences in the areas concerned. Rather than demonstrating a new seriousness of approach to tackling the security and development problems of the non-Western world, the discussions around this framework betray the separation between policy rhetoric and policy planning. This reflects the rise of anti-foreign policy: attempts to use the international sphere as an arena for self-referential statements of political mission and purpose, decoupled from their subject matter, resulting in ad hoc and arbitrary foreign policy-making